Writers & Lovers(26)

His mouth twists. He’s only practiced these words. He doesn’t have any more.

‘Here.’ I put down the plate in my left hand on the counter of the wait station. ‘I’ll take this now. And if there’s change I’ll give it back to you. I won’t bring you a check. Does that sound okay?’

He nods, hands me the money, and makes a fast but indirect retreat back to his table.

Down in the club bar, the family asks for ketchup, extra Caesar dressing, an Arnold Palmer, and a glass of grigio, but when I get upstairs I can’t breeze past the boys in bow ties again. I sidestep Mary Hand dropping salads at her eight and slide to a halt at their table.

The boys look up from their menus at the same time. The father does not look up. But he’s familiar. The father is Oscar Kolton.

‘How are you this morning?’ I say, angling my head to the boys on my right, hoping I can get their drink order before my blush has reached full force.

Waiting on writers is my undoing. Jayne Anne Phillips came in a few weeks ago, and my face flamed up every time I went to the table. Her collection Black Tickets is like a prayer book to me. When she and her two friends ordered tea, the cups rattled on their saucers as I set them down. I’ll have to get Mary Hand to take over Oscar Kolton’s table.

‘Fine,’ the older boy, the one who gave me the money, says.

‘Hot chocolate, hot coffee, hot tea?’

‘Hot chocolate? In the summer?’ the smaller boy says.

‘It’s not summer. It’s autumn,’ his brother says, pronouncing the n.

‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I used to work at this ski resort in New Mexico, and it just comes out like that sometimes: hot chocolate, hot coffee, hot tea.’ First comes the blushing, then the babbling. ‘I could bring it cold if you like.’

‘No chocolate,’ Oscar says, still not looking up, thank God. ‘Coffee for me. Black.’

‘And for you two?’

Silence. Of course they want the chocolate.

‘They’ll both have orange juice,’ Oscar mumbles, flipping over the menu to find it blank and turning it back over with a frown.

Mary Hand gets a six so I can’t pass them off on her. I bring my downstairs table their drinks and condiments, then come back up for the OJs and the coffee. They have set their menus in a neat stack at the end of the table. Without menus they have nowhere to look. I place the glasses of juice above the boys’ knives and pour the coffee from one of our silver-plated decanters into Oscar’s coffee cup. They watch my hands in silence. Even in the chaos and clatter of brunch, I’m aware of the empty chair, the hole where a mother should be.

Oscar reaches for the cup before I’ve stopped pouring. He takes a long sip and holds it with both hands in front of him. I think of Silas saying Oscar put his hands behind his back while listening to his story and no one knew what that meant.

‘Boys,’ he says.

‘I would please like the eggs with sausage and a biscuit and side of fruit,’ the older one says.

‘Scrambled, fried, or poached egg?’

He looks at his father.

‘Poached is sort of boiled but not in the shell. You won’t like it. It’s runny.’

‘Scrambled please.’

‘And for you?’

The younger boy stares at me, having forgotten his lines. His eyes swell, and he ducks his head into the crook of his arm.

I hazard a guess. ‘Blueberry pancakes with a side of bacon?’

He nods fiercely.

‘Mind reader,’ Oscar says, unimpressed. ‘I’ll have the coddled eggs.’ He hands me the menu. ‘Only because I wanted to say the word “coddled.” ’ His eyes flash up briefly—the brightest green of all.

I put a rush on their meal. Mary Hand tells me Oscar and his family used to come in for Mother’s Day every year. ‘I figured I’d never see them again.’

‘It’s his birthday. The kids are treating.’ I hold up the wad of money.

‘Cuteness on a stick,’ she says in her drawl, punching in her big order.

Marcus comes around the corner. ‘You know that’s Oscar Kolton, right?’

‘Yes, I know.’

When I bring more coffee each of Oscar’s hands are in a thumb wrestle. They all pull apart so I can pour.

‘Say thank you, Papa,’ the younger one says.

‘Thank you.’

They resume their thumb wrestling.

I load up the next five-top order and bring it downstairs, clear plates, refill coffees, pass around the dessert menus, welcome a new deuce they’ve wedged in near the bathroom. Gory, in whites for a croquet tournament in Lennox in the afternoon, stops by Oscar’s table. A few people nearby look on.

‘Your bennies are up,’ Tony tells me as he whips by with five chocolate bombs up his arm.

‘You are not a waitress if you do not pick up your food,’ Clark says when I come into the kitchen. He snaps a rag at me through the window and it catches on some of the hollandaise, which splatters on my cheek and collar. It burns. I wipe it off and my eyes are watering, but I wheel around with my two benedicts before he can see.

‘Ugly-ass bitch,’ he says as I kick through the door.

It’s a question of displeasing everyone a little bit, spreading around the disappointment evenly. When I get downstairs and drop the meals at table 4, table 6 is ready to order dessert. Oscar and the boys’ food will be up now, but a man at 6 can’t decide between the bourbon pecan pie and the compote.